Hereinafter, a digital image is interchangeably referred to as simply “images” or “image” unless expressly disambiguated where used.
An image is a digital representation or facsimile of a physical object or a collection of physical objects. Technology presently exists to detect or recognize certain objects that are present in a given image. For example, a digital camera can recognize that objects, such as human faces or human eyes, are present in an image created by the camera lens on the sensor of the camera. Photo editing software can recognize that objects, such as straight lines, are present in an image being edited.
Generally, the present technology for object detection in images relies upon identifying those features of those objects for which such technology has been programmed. Stated another way, an existing image processing engine will only recognize certain objects by identifying certain features of those objects, where the engine is pre-programmed to identify the features described in a file or repository of features that is associated with the engine. There is a specific syntax in which the features are described in such a file, the engine reads the syntactic definition of a feature from the file, the engine compares image pixels with the defined feature, and the engine finds an acceptable match between a defined feature from the file and certain pixel arrangements in the given image.